What is covered in AP Psychology Unit 2?

Unit 2, Cognition, covers memory (encoding, storage, retrieval, and forgetting), thinking and problem solving including heuristics and biases, intelligence and its measurement, and language.

What experiments are in AP Psychology Unit 2?

Classic cognition demonstrations include the Stroop test (selective attention), the digit-span memory test (the 7 ± 2 limit), and cognitive-bias tasks like anchoring and the conjunction fallacy. AppsychLab lets you run all of these on yourself.

AP Psychology · Unit 2

AP Psychology Unit 2: Cognition

Unit 2 is how the mind takes in, stores, and uses information — memory, thinking, intelligence, and language. It's also the unit where AppsychLab has the most for you to do, because the classic cognition studies are tasks you can run on yourself.

Run Unit 2 yourself: Stroop Test · Memory Span Test · Cognitive Bias Test

Memory

Start with the flow of memory: encoding → storage → retrieval. Know the three-stage model — sensory memory, short-term/working memory (about 7 ± 2 items, expandable by chunking), and long-term memory. Study aids that appear on the exam include the spacing effect, the serial position effect (primacy and recency), and retrieval cues like context- and state-dependent memory. For forgetting, know encoding failure, decay, proactive and retroactive interference, and retrieval failure, plus Loftus's misinformation effect. You can feel the capacity limit directly with the memory span test.

Thinking, Problem Solving, and Biases

Distinguish algorithms (slow, guaranteed) from heuristics (fast shortcuts). Master the big biases: the availability heuristic, the representativeness heuristic (and the conjunction fallacy it causes), confirmation bias, anchoring, the framing effect, functional fixedness, and mental set. The cognitive bias test catches several of these in your own thinking, and the Stroop test shows automatic processing interfering with attention.

Intelligence

Compare theories — Spearman's general intelligence (g), Gardner's multiple intelligences, and Sternberg's triarchic theory. For testing, know the history (Binet, Terman, Wechsler) and the psychometric must-knows: reliability, validity, standardization, the normal curve, and the Flynn effect.

Language

Know the building blocks — phonemes, morphemes, grammar — the milestones of language development, and the nature–nurture debate around acquisition (including Chomsky's view of an innate capacity).

How to Study Unit 2

Cognition rewards application over memorization, so don't just define terms — use them. Run each experiment, then write one sentence explaining the mechanism in your own words; that's exactly what application questions ask. Then mix it into full practice on the practice test. Next up: Unit 3: Development and Learning, or revisit the units overview.

Learn Cognition by Doing It

Measure your own Stroop effect and memory span — then the exam questions write themselves.

Run an Experiment

Aligned to the College Board's redesigned AP Psychology course (2024–25). AppsychLab is not affiliated with the College Board.